Patients who are confined in a lying position because of infirmity and/or in connection with recovery from surgery or the like are unable to use a standard toilet for purposes of urination. Instead, typically, they must urinate into an open-topped container, known as a urinal. Because the typical patient can be expected to urinate more than a single time in the course of a night, the standard practice is to position several empty urinals in close proximity to the patient. This is often done by hanging empty urinals (which usually have handles) on the bed rail, resting them on a nightstand, or the like.
As each urinal is used, the patient is supposed to place it on a bedside table or similar location, so that it may later be removed by a health care provider. Even where a urinal is not completely filled, a patient will generally be unwilling to further fill it later for fear of spillage, and will instead prefer to position the partially-filled urinal on the table and use an empty urinal for the next urination. As a consequence, at the end of a night, it is not uncommon to find three or four full or partially full urinals on the patient's bedside table.
The need to deal with a plurality of urinals in various states of fullness can be cumbersome for a patient. It is frequently the case that urinals are knocked over, causing the spilling of urine onto the patient, his clothes, and his bedding. Of course, such an event can be extremely upsetting and unpleasant to the patient, and can even be physically harmful to the patient's skin.
A need exists for a urine disposing apparatus and method that permits a patient to utilize a single urinal for multiple voids, with the urinal being capable of being placed by the patient into an empty condition prior to each use. The present invention satisfies this need and provides other, related, advantages.